


Funayūrei

by Michael_McGruder



Series: IX [5]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:50:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3301439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michael_McGruder/pseuds/Michael_McGruder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A direct sequel to Wabi Sabi, Lister tries to help Rimmer cope with the mental and physical repercussions of his aneurysm. </p><p>AN: This story is tagged for some dark places Rimmer visits in his subconscious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funayūrei

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to Wabi Sabi, so you may be lost if you haven't read that first. It also makes references to events in Config.Sys.  
> The dialog contains some homophobic language, so please be advised.

Kryten stood next to Rimmer in the medibay offering words of encouragement. The hologram was trying, with great difficulty, to thread a wire through an eye hook. The tip of the wire avoided the loop in his unsteady hand like two negative magnets.

“Come on, sir, you can do it! You’re so close, _so close_ , just inch it a little bit to the left,” Kryten chanted like the ugliest cheerleader.

“Kryten, will you shut your damn stupid DeLorean reject head,” Rimmer snapped. “I cannot concentrated with you yammering in my ear.”

“Yes, sir, sorry sir,” Kryten apologized bashfully. “I just thought you could use some pepping.”

After the 47th attempt and failure to thread the loop, Rimmer threw the wire on the floor in frustration. His head was pounding.

“What I need, you metal gimp, is better dexterity programming. I thought you fixed this. Why am I still as steady as an epileptic after a marathon of Japanese cartoons and a double espresso?”

“Sir, it has nothing to do with the programming. The mobility scripts I installed into your neural net are identical to your old ones. Unfortunately the aneurysm disrupted most of your brain’s pathways to those functions. The only way to rebuild those connections is through manual repetitive stimuli.”

Rimmer closed his eyes and huffed a frustrated sigh. He knew all this, as they’d been through it a hundred times. He just thought it was all hideously unfair that there wasn’t some kind of hack or cheat to move things along faster.

“Honestly, sir, you’re making remarkable progress, all things considered.”

“Then why do I need this?” Rimmer asked, shaking his cane.

When his walking had become increasingly unsteady, Rimmer had dug it out of his Javanese chest. The cane, made of solid blackthorn and topped with a silver fist, had belonged to his father. Rimmer had received a number of beatings from the cane, so he had mixed feelings about its use, but it had been convenient and on hand.

“Your relapse affected your gross motor skills, sir. You must try not to over stress yourself, your systems just can’t handle it at the moment.”

“This certainly isn’t helping,” Rimmer groused, gesturing to the eye hook.

Rimmer hobbled back to the sleeping quarters, throwing himself into his armchair, massaging his throbbing temples. He tried not to think of how white those hairs were becoming.

There was absolutely no reason a hologram needed to physically age, except that they were programmed to. Just to make living people more comfortable. Even in death he couldn’t escape the morbidity of age.

He looked at the cane. The mocking indignity of dependence. He thought of his father sitting by the window, even the cane of no help anymore.

Rimmer was utter crap at relaxing, and found himself digging himself into a deeper and deeper trench of depression.

He was hovering somewhere between nihilist and suicidal when Lister walked in.

“You look like smeg, mate,” he observed.

“Oh bugger off,” Rimmer growled. Lister sat on the arm of the chair, pressing a kiss to Rimmer’s temple. The hologram batted him away irritably.

“I was talking to Kryten,” Lister said, undeterred by Rimmer’s mood. “He said you was having trouble threading bolts or something,”

“Yes, or something,” Rimmer sneered.

“Well, I thought this might be a little more interesting physical therapy.” Lister handed Rimmer a slim wooden box. The box he kept his water colour paints and brushes in, and a few sheets of 3x5 paper.

Rimmer blinked, feeling inexplicably moved by the gesture. Lister leaned down and spoke in a low voice next to Rimmer’s ear.

“We can do other fun exercises for the larger muscles.” Lister lecherously groped Rimmer’s inner thigh, sticking his tongue down his ear.

 

The next few days, Rimmer had been busy sketching. Slowly strengthening is finer motor skills. At least, that was the idea. Progress was slow and incremental, and Rimmer, never very patient, was getting discouraged.

Lister thumbed through the sketches sitting on the table. They were all drawings of gantry ways, bulkheads, and engines. They should have been boring, but somehow they were… dramatic.

“These are really good,” Lister said, surprised.

“Don’t patronize me,” Rimmer growled from his bunk.

“Spoken like a true artist,” Lister replied. He was honestly jealous. Lister was the one who went to art college, sort of. His own style was more experimental, but still.

Lister suddenly felt a rush of frustration. Rimmer spent all 31 years of his life struggling to be good at something he hated, all the while never pursuing something he was good at. What a waste.

“I’m _not_ an artist,” Rimmer insisted.

“I just don’t get you, man. You’re always whinging about not being good at anything, having no talent, when all of it is right here!”

Rimmer’s hand squeezed the silver topped cane in a white knuckle grip, storming over to the table, slamming the cane on the papers. Lister jumped back, startled by the sudden outburst, watching as Rimmer manically tore up the drawings.

“This is not what I _want!_ _Art_ is for sissy poofs who can’t get a real job! Hitler was living on the streets as an _artist_ , and was close to ruling Europe as soon as he threw his paint box away! It’s a stupid, shameful, useless waste of time! But _NO!_ Arnie can’t be a soldier because he’s too busy drawing _pictures._ Arnie holds a pencil because he can’t hold a rifle! Every good boy disappoints father, doesn’t he?”

Lister was taken aback, not sure what to say. He looked at the pieces of paper littering the floor sadly as Rimmer huffed in red faced fury. He knew that was Rimmer’s father talking.

Lister had never been great at guitar as a kid, though he was much better now. He knew it drove his Gran up the wall, but she never discouraged him from it, and even bought him new strings every birthday. He couldn’t imagine having someone try so hard to suffocate a passion.

He could see now this was a passion. Rimmer wouldn’t have gotten so hot if it wasn’t. He could see it in everything he did, from his map paintings to his revision timetables.

Rimmer clutched his face, growling in frustration, and Lister gently put his hands on his back.

“Your dad isn’t here anymore. Even if he was, he was a nutter. Just because he couldn’t see the value in it doesn’t mean there isn’t any.” Rimmer whined and Lister wrapped his arms around him. “Just because he couldn’t see the value in his son, doesn’t mean there isn’t any.”

Rimmer clutched Lister like a lifeline, his whole body shaking, threatening to collapse underneath him at any moment.

“If the last human alive loves you, that’s gotta count for something, right?

 

Arnold sat in his father’s study, his heart pounding in his chest. Mr. Rimmer had told his youngest son to go upstairs and wait for him there. When Arnold saw his sketch book sitting on the desk, his stomach dropped into his shoes.

He wondered if his father had already looked through it. Maybe there was still time to snatch it away and hide it somewhere. No, that was a stupid idea. He was already caught. Anything he did now would just make things worse.

When he heard his father approaching, the twelve year old’s chest constricted tighter and tighter with each footfall. When he heard the door knob, he could barely breath, and it took all his efforts of concentration to keep his teeth from chattering as he shook in his seat.

Arthur Rimmer sat down at his desk, not even looking at Arnold. Instead, to Arnold’s horror, he idly thumbed through the sketch book. They sat in weighted silence for five minutes, as he looked through every page. When he was done, he threw the book down on the table, glaring at the boy.

“Rubbish. Trash. Pictures of flowers and birds? Pictures of mountains?”

“It’s Mt. Seth,” Arnold said pitifully.

“ _Silence,_ ” Arthur hissed. “You’re failing your classes and you don’t know a thing about astronavigation, and now I see why. Wasting your time on this garbage. It makes me sick, Arnold.” The boy stared at his shoes, his eyes brimming with tears. The sharp rap of his father’s cane slamming the desk top brought him back to attention. “Look at me when I speak to you. What have I told you about _poets_ and _artists_ and _musicians_?”

“They don’t get good jobs?” the boy answered cautiously.

“What else?”

“They’re queer?”

“So you do remember. You remember that artist is another word for homosexual vagabond, and still I find this under your mattress?” Arthur said, shaking the book. “I’d be less disappointed to find a dirty magazine.” Arnold’s face flushed. “Open the book.”

The boy did as he was told. The first page was a sketch of their back garden, full of lush vegetation.

“Pull it out and tear it up.” Arnold looked at his father with wounded shock. “Do not make me ask twice.” Arnold pulled out the page, slowly tearing it into pieces. “And the same with the next.”

He sat there, pulling out every page in his sketch book, shredding his drawings. By the time he was finished, he was blubbering shamelessly. He wiped his eyes, trying to contain himself. Arthur stood from his seat and moved behind Arnold.

“Take your trousers down and bend over the desk.”

“Please don’t, father,” Arnold squeaked. Arthur grabbed him by his hair and bent him over the desk, yanking his trousers down. Arnold balled his fists and squeezed his eyes shut as the first THWACK of the cane struck his back side.

“That’s one per page in the book. How many pages were there?”

“A hundred,” Arnold whispered. He was caned nine more times, trying not to cry out, having learned the more he cried, the harder his father hit him.

“Tomorrow after school, you will come straight to my study for ten more. The next day, the same, until we reach one hundred. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Arnold said, pulling up his trousers. Arthur stopped him.

“I have one more thing to drive the point home.”

Arnold felt crushed under the weight of the much heavier body leaning over him, and sick panic swallowed him as his buttocks were spread apart. He tried to scramble away, but much stronger hands held him in his place.

“No, don’t!”

Each thrust was defeat. Each thrust was a personal failure. Something he brought on himself. Self administered poison. If only he’d listened, if only he’d been a good boy, and done as he’d been told.

Strips of lavender boilersuit fabric were torn from him, and he looked up to see his father passively watching his assault.

“Fifteen of these should teach you a lesson, boy.”

 

When Rimmer awoke, it wasn’t with a start or a scream. He didn’t lash out or bolt up. He opened his eyes, staring at the underside of the top bunk, feeling the weight of Lister’s head and arm on his chest, and his morning glory pressing against his thigh.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before Lister woke up, blearily looking at Rimmer with a half smile.

“Mornin’ love,” he said, pressing a sleepy kiss to the corner of Rimmer’s mouth. Lister lay there next to Rimmer, slowly adjusting to consciousness. His broad hand stroked down Rimmer’s chest and stomach in slow motions, and his hips made needy, antsy motions. Lister nuzzled Rimmer’s neck, just below his jaw, his hand traveling between his legs. He was slightly disappointed to find not much going on down there.

Lister shimmied up a bit, leaning on his elbow to look at Rimmer. The hologram stared into space like a catatonic. Lister’s brow crinkled and he kissed his temple.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered. Rimmer shook his head.

“Nothing, go ahead,” he said. Lister blinked.

“What, without you?”

“It’s fine, do what you like,” Rimmer said in a voice barely present.

“I’m not gonna just… have you. Are you okay?”

“I only get what I deserve.”

Lister grabbed one of his hands, rubbing it gently between his own, and sighed, laying back down.

“If I could make you happy, would you believe you deserved that?” It was a stupid question, Lister knew. No one could make Rimmer happy except himself, but he felt so helpless. “I’ll make us some tea,” he said, carefully climbing out of the bunk.

 

“So what’s wrong with being a sissy artist poof, anyway?” Lister asked as they sat around their breakfast.

“Pardon me?”

“It’s just that you’re so fixated on that being a bad thing.”

“It is,” he said with narrowed eyes.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, _why_?”

“Okay, let’s break this down,” Lister said, stuffing a toasty soldier in his mouth. “Being an artist is bad because they’re _all_ gay and don’t have jobs, or whatever. Ignoring the fact that that is objectively false,”

“Well the only artist I know is you, and you’re jobless and apparently gay, so as it stands, 100% of artists are gay and don’t have jobs.”

“There’s a difference between bi and gay, but that’s a different conversation. But okay, as it stands, 100% of living artists are bisexual and don’t have jobs. So… I guess that means we win, right? Out of all the combinations in the human race, only an unemployed bisexual guitarist made it to the end of the universe. That’s better than employee of the month at Job-Mart or whatever.”

“Does the number 15 mean anything to you?” Rimmer asked. Lister blinked, feeling sideswiped by the random question.

“What?”

“The number 15. It keeps popping into my head, but I don’t know why.”

“No…? Not off the top of me head,” Lister said, giving Rimmer an odd look. Rimmer shook his head.

“Never mind, sorry, yes, I see your point,” he said quickly, though Lister doubted it had really sunk in.

“Well anyway, it’s up to you, mate. It’s that or threading wires through loops with Kryten.”

 

Rimmer found himself sitting in a gloomy ocean grey hallway in the dead of night, making messy charcoal marks on paper.

He thought not being able to draw a straight line would bother him less, having always devalued his “artistic” skills. Even the word felt tangy and wrong in his mouth. But as his trembling hands marred the paper with indecipherable scribbles, he felt his chest constrict with grief.

He felt stupid and childish. So what if he couldn’t draw? Art was for poncy tossers in black polo necks. For sissy poofs, as Howard had told him when he’d found his sketch book.

But it was the only thing he was ever good at.

He thought about the bed he shared with Lister. He thought about the fact that he’d had sex with far more men than women.

 _‘No you haven’t,’_ his mind hissed sharply. Rimmer blinked. No, of course he hadn’t. He didn’t know why the thought had crossed his mind.

The number 15 flashed in his mind. It loomed, hot and dangerous, and he didn’t know why.

They were just dreams, just nightmares. Meaningless.

A skutter nudged his elbow, handing him the pencil he hadn’t realized he’d dropped.

Rimmer looked at the helpful little droid, and had a sudden urge to kick it to pieces. He thought about having to be dependent on them again, because his scrambled brain made his solid hands as useless as shafts of light.

He took the pencil from the skutter and started scribbling again. He wasn’t going back to being a ghost.

 

When both sides of each paper had been filled, Rimmer ambled down the corridor, one hand clutching his drawings, the other his cane. His pace was slow and awkward as he tried to work the stiffness out of his left leg.

He had intended to return to the sleeping quarters, but found himself standing outside Kochanski’s door. Kochanski’s former door, anyway. He fingered the silver cane top and licked his lips nervously before going inside.

Rimmer stood in the vacated quarters, looking around. Almost nothing had been touched since she left. It was preserved, like an exhibit at an historical museum. Most of the ship and other quarters were like that. All the things left behind by the dead crew.

 _“It is sad to think that a man's familiar possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain long after he is gone,”_ Rimmer had read in one of Kochanski’s books on Japanese aesthetics.

He and Lister had never been very bothered by the morbidity of looting the crew’s things, or commandeering better quarters. At least, not of the people they didn’t know. To his knowledge, Lister had never gone hunting around in Petersen’s quarters, and Rimmer had never raided Yvonne McGruder’s things.

Here, now, in Kochanski’s quarters, it felt different. Her departure was too recent, too personal. But something drew him here, and he wasn’t sure what it was until he was standing in front of her bookshelf staring at it.

Learn Japanese by Dr. P. Brewis.

Rimmer’s mouth felt dry when he looked at it. He felt an undercurrent of anxious dread. That feeling when you know you’ve forgotten something very, _very_ important.

No matter how hard he wracked his brain, he could not explain why this little paperback drew and terrified him.

He tucked his drawings under one arm and with a pale trembling hand, reached out to pick up the book. It felt heavier than it should. Hotter than it should. As though it were radioactive. Rimmer took the book with him to the sleeping quarters, setting it on the table with his paper and pencils.

He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. Rimmer wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there at the basin, but eventually he felt Lister pulling him away.

“Sit down,” Lister said, easing Rimmer into his armchair. He kneeled down in front of the hologram, looking up at his blank face. “What’s wrong?”

Rimmer looked at Lister like he was a stranger. Lister felt cold teasing fingers of panic, until Rimmer’s eyes focused again, coming back to reality.

“I don’t know,” he said. Lister turned around and looked at the book.

“You brought that back with you.” He looked at Rimmer again. “What’s so special about it?” Rimmer could barely learn Esperanto, Lister seriously doubted he’d be interested in Japanese.

“I don’t know,” Rimmer repeated. Lister chewed his lip, worrying.

 

Rimmer was cagey and aloof the rest of the day, prowling around the sleeping quarters, throwing dark, anxious looks at the paperback. Lister thought about taking it back to Kochanski’s quarters, as the book served as a potent weight in his own heart. A reminder that she would never open it again. Part of him wanted to throw it out an airlock, while the other part wanted to put it in a shrine.

He did neither of those things, as Rimmer had obviously brought it back for a reason, even if neither of them could figure out what that reason was.

Their brooding was interrupted by Kryten, who had come in to deliver a few mail envelopes. When the mechanoid gave the book a double take as he was setting the mail down, Lister knew it wasn’t their imagination.

“What’s the deal with the book, Krytes?” Lister asked, trying to sound casual. Kryten put his chiseled hand on the cover, as if to keep it from accidentally springing open. His glass blue eyes darted towards Rimmer once, and then avoided looking at the hologram again.

“This is Miss Kochanski’s,” he said. “It shouldn’t be in here.”

“Is there something amiss about it?” Lister persisted.

“It doesn’t belong in here. I’ll return it to her quarters,” Kryten said, scurrying off with the book before Lister or Rimmer could protest.

 

“Fancy a game of Risk?”

“Excuse me?” Rimmer asked. Lister had said a lot of things that had surprised Rimmer over the years, but even after another three million he wouldn’t have expected to hear him ask that. The Scouser shrugged, trying to look nonchalant.

“It’s not just your body that needs PT,” Lister said. “Kryten said you ought to be exercising your brain as well. Puzzles, crosswords, that sort of thing. Risk is kinda like that, isn’t it? Strategy and all that, yeah?”

Rimmer pulled the old board game out of his trunk and when they emptied the contents on the table, Rimmer stared at it blankly.

“I don’t…” Rimmer murmured. “I don’t know what any of this is.”

Lister tried to quiet the alarm bells ringing in his head. Kryten had explained that some memory loss was to be expected, but for a man who could recount every move of every game he’d played in school to look at the pieces and not even know what they were was a little jarring to Lister.

“Okay, well,” Lister said, picking up the rule booklet. He read the instructions out loud, struggling to understand them himself. He looked up at Rimmer, hoping they made sense to him. The hologram still looked lost. Maybe they should have started with a simpler game, like draughts.

Rimmer picked the instructions out of Lister’s hand and reread them quietly to himself. He started distributing pieces and cards, occasionally referring back to the rules to double check that he was doing it correctly.

The game was slightly stilted at first, both of them unsure and on the learning curve, but once they got the hang of it, it started to become fun. Even having to relearn how to play, Rimmer still thrashed Lister three times in a row.

“This is fun,” Rimmer said. “No wonder I used to play it all the time.”

 

When Rimmer had nodded off in is armchair, Lister went off to find some crossword books. On his hunt, his mind wandered back to Kochanski’s book. Curiosity getting the better of him, he found himself in her quarters, thumbing through the book.

Lister started glazing pretty quickly, not knowing anything about the language, or having any real interest in it. There were some dog-eared pages, a few things underlined in pencil, but no real clue as to why it had spooked Rimmer so much.

The door opened and Lister jumped, guiltily dropping the book as Kryten came in.

“Mr. Lister!” Kryten chided. “What are you doing in here?”

“Looking for crossword books.” That was half true. Kryten bent down and picked up the book. “Look, Kryten, what is the deal with that book? You know, so just tell me already.” Kryten fussed before relenting.

“It contains the password for Mr. Rimmer’s locked memories.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the airlock option started to sound like a good idea.

And yet.

The hideous guilt that allowed him to get away with his “prank,” that allowed him to sleep next to Rimmer while he was tormented in dreams, that part of him innocuously suggested that Lister might accidentally leave it for Rimmer to discover.

Lister cursed himself. Even his guilt was stupid and self indulgent. Though it might have justly exposed his crime, would it actually be any better for Rimmer to remember?

McClaren, the ship’s psychiatrist had thought so, and when they’d activated his hologram to help Rimmer cope, McClaren had tried his hardest to dig those memories out.

Lister shook his head, reminding himself that Rimmer had _chosen_ to hide the memories. While Rimmer might have been the least qualified to determine what was best for his mental health, Lister didn’t think he was much better. He also wasn’t sure the memories wouldn’t send him into another spasm.

So Lister put the book back on the shelf, trying to be content with the fact that, even though he might not remember, this is what Rimmer had chosen.

 

Rimmer awoke to find himself alone in the sleeping quarters. He rubbed his eyes and flexed his stiff hand. He struggled out of his chair and started putting the pieces of their game back in the box. When he went to put the game on their bookshelf, he noticed some wrinkled papers sticking out of one of Lister’s football books.

He tugged them out, looking through them. They were his drawings, meticulously taped back together. Some of the pieces were in the wrong order, or taped to the wrong picture, but all of them were reconstructed from the mess he’d made earlier.

Rimmer put them back in the book. He was ashamed at how weepy and emotional he’d become lately, and was grateful that Lister wasn’t here to see him well up. He was almost as grateful when Lister returned, and didn’t ask why when he captured him in a fierce hug.


End file.
